I feel so powerful vs shaman teams because of this. They are so scared of me that they tremor every full fear i get on them no questions asked. Its because I'm just too powerful sitting a full fear isn't worth the risk

one thing that boggles my mind is when people are star struck in arena ..

they see someone who has a rank 1 title or a glad title or they know of the person because they are good and people just shut down like "oh great its X we lose.." if you take that negative thought and let it grow to the point where you actually think you're going to lose then you have already lost..

edit :

Synkz, on 13 April 2013 - 04:45 AM, said:

I feel like fear (and emotions in general) are the main things that seperate a 2k player from a 2400+ player. Both of these groups of players know how they should play, but one group lets fear direct their play while the other group doesn't.

I think another fear, much more common among low-rated players than high-rated players, is the fear of someone's title. If a 1700 Rival goes into a game and sees Gladiator titles on the other team, they're gonna be nervous and likely will make mistakes.

Its like a simpler version of starcraft 2 where you have to judge whether a team is going allin on you based on their positioning and cooldown usage - especially with burst being so high as you cant afford to misjudge. I think it applied moreso in previous expansions where better players really were able to differentiate themselves and do a ton more damage by having better mechanics. In wotlk you had to play differently against vileroze or uck (i think he was the austrailian destro lock) who could just pump damage better than anyone else, than you did against someone like nadagast or houndus who just had sick control and knew how to abuse positioning.

I wish metagaming like this was as important in WoW as it is in SC2, where staying offensive and scaring a zerg player into wasting larva on lings and units in the early game can put him in an unwinnable position lategame... if damage across the board was lower I think WoW could achieve something like this but the playstyle is just so homogenized that any real team feels more or less the same.

So you are telling me that emotions play a role in a competition between players?! This is ground breaking news thank you lord of shadow priests

At least he's trying to help the community, if you think that is common knowledge among the average players, you're delusional.

OT : I fully agree, i do think the biggest factors are confidence and knowledge tough. Confidence in yourself and trust in your partners play a major role, if you trust your healer you're much less likely to waste cooldowns because you know he will be able to handle the situation unless he tells you otherwise.

Knowledge comes from knowing what is availlable to your team, and what is availlable to the enemy team, thats why communication is so important. Your much less likely to make mistakes if you know your healer has his trinket and NS/SLT up and ready for example, on the same side, if you know the other team's burst cooldowns are gone you might not need to pop defensives as fast and keep them for later.

Both those factors reduces the stress you feel in game and helps you make better calls.

kannetixx, on 14 April 2013 - 12:00 AM, said:

one thing that boggles my mind is when people are star struck in arena ..

they see someone who has a rank 1 title or a glad title or they know of the person because they are good and people just shut down like "oh great its X we lose.." if you take that negative thought and let it grow to the point where you actually think you're going to lose then you have already lost..

This, i can't stand it but its such a big factor, specially around duelist ranges where you actually fight some well known players from times to times, best thing to do is turn off anything that can distract you, and call people by their class.

Braindance, on 13 April 2013 - 04:38 AM, said:

Cdew and Flubbah must be completely fearless because they don't pop cds even at 10% and still live like bosses

And this is because of my earlier point. They know whats going on with both their team and the other team, they know whats going to happen way ahead of time and know how they will deal with it. Those players play the game 3-4-5 moves in advance and know every single cooldown in the game and communicate everything so every risks are calculated. I guess RNG crits could fuck them over tough.

completely agree with the topic
i know alot of ppl that has this fear on them, all they have to do is not care if they lose or win, but its a really hard thing for some.
they can also need to realize that what they are facing are just players like them i think that can work too

Cortisol actually has profound effects on the ability to both recall and critically think. Ever observe someone in a lecture get called on to answer a simple question that he or she should know but they completely blank out under the pressure. Same thing.

It is an interesting topic though, one that I have thought of and used for years. Another interesting point I have observed over the years: some players produce top dps/pressure when they are not focused but crumble when they are focused. Therefore, while they may not be the best target to be on class-wise, they are the best target in that setup since their dps/pressure crumbles.

As a healer I get pissed when people play defensive when they don't need to. If someone is lowish and I have big heals coming, I will always communicate "Hey you're fine stay aggressive, I got you"

Trusting your healer is huge. I feel like the healer should be in charge of calling your teammates defensive cooldowns. A lot of times if this isn't communicated you will overlap CD's.

I haven't played this expansion much so its a bit harder for me to anticipate damage. Anticipating damage just comes from lots and lots of practice and experience. The "fear" factor goes away when your healer is good at communicating and anticipating damage.

Edited by Bakr, 22 April 2013 - 12:42 PM.

Ctuhlu said:

Regardless of what anyone says you are the most zergable healer in the game. At least Priests have Pain Sup/PWB. You'll love two but hate all the zerg bullshit in 3s.

I haven't played this expansion much so its a bit harder for me to anticipate damage. Anticipating damage just comes from lots and lots of practice and experience. The "fear" factor goes away when your healer is good at communicating and anticipating damage.

This is something Cdew is amazing at, and it's one of the reasons he's an outstanding healer. In my opinion, he's the easiest streamer to see it on, because he's so certain about the incoming damage and swaps that he'll happily leave himself or other people at miniscule amounts of health just to save on CDs for a swap later on.

I think another interesting point to be made about the entire subject is the opposite of fear. Being cocky or complacent because the other team haven't ever been high rated can cause a fair few losses too. I'm a never-glad, and last season we fought a multi-glad R1 mirror, we were confident and they were complacent, they didn't use CDs properly and ended up losing against players nearly 500 rating lower than themselves (shatterplay vs shatterplay).